UPDATE: Kenyan judge gives British aristocrat a virtual walk for manslaughter

No doubt the entire nation of Kenya was watching anxiously yesterday to see what sentence the presiding judge would give Thomas Cholmondeley for killing a black man he suspected of poaching on his family’s sprawling estate.  Here, for the record, is what I predicted:

[T]he sentence will be closer to life imprisonment than a walk. That is, unless Lord Delamere has already deposited “ransom” money in an off shore account to buy unwarranted leniency for his trigger-happy heir, which would surprise nobody who knows anything about corruption in Kenya….

[Kenya convicts murdering British aristocrat of manslaughter, TIJ, May 11, 2009]

As it turned out, Cholmondeley’s sentence was closer to a walk than the life imprisonment he deserved (for this killing and karmic justice for getting away with another murder). The judge gave him just eight months.

Of course I have no evidence that his father bought this lenient sentence. But shocked and outraged black Kenyans can be forgiven their remonstration that it reeks of preferential treatment:

The judgement is quite lenient. It raises questions about our judicial system. Robbers have been jailed for life. Even petty thieves get five years. Yet here, someone was killed.

(Francis Wambita, 45, in interview with BBC)

What is particularly galling is that, in granting this patently unfair sentence, the judge insisted that:

There should not be one law for the rich and another for the poor.

Now, given the mass protests this sentence reportedly provoked in the Maasai community, it remains to be seen if they will execute the threats they made when Cholmondeley was arrested three years ago:

Maasai elders – who once encouraged deference to the aristocratic prerogatives of white colonialists – have now vowed to lead their fellow warriors in attack on the Cholmondeley farm (and others) to exact Mugabe-style retribution for this murder and so many other racial injustices.

[English aristocrats continue their white mischief in Africa…, TIJ, May 23, 2005]

NOTE:  Local leaders are now calling for independence for my mother country, the Turks and Caicos Islands.  But to see why I think they’re all full of S#!+, click here.

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